“Don’t worry, Toni. When my time comes, I will have the certainty that I have given everything.” That’s what Rafael Nadal promised his coach of years Toni Nadal, who now responded to his nephew’s resignation with a long letter.
by Johanna Brauer
last edited: October 21, 2024, 9:47 p.m
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When Nadal announced his retirement on October 10th, the words of his long-time companion and coach Toni Nadal were initially a bit brief. “Thank you,” Nadal’s uncle wrote on Instagram. A week later, the Spanish coach responded with a three-page letter full of emotions for the 22-time Grand Slam champion. “There are athletes who, thanks to their enormous abilities, have managed to be among the greats in their discipline. Some of them have managed to develop further in their sport or even grow beyond it, and a few, because of their attitude and way of working, have grown beyond the sport itself and become role models for society,” wrote 63-year-old Uncle Toni , who accompanied Nadal on the tour from the beginning until 2017.
“I think, without fear of being inappropriate (…), that my nephew, just like his greatest rival Roger Federer, belongs to the latter category.” Uncle Toni is absolutely right.
Uncle Toni: “He has learned to live with pain”
It’s no secret that Nadal’s career was marked by injuries. The incredible results that Nadal achieved despite his health limitations are all the more astonishing. “In difficult times, I repeated to him something that I have now written down here: ‘Rafael, life has treated us better than we expected and much better than we deserved.'”
Nadal, who began his tennis career alongside Toni in Monacor, ends his incredible journey at the Davis Cup final in Malaga. “Everything that happened between these long-gone years and this endpoint (…) is the manifestation of an almost perfect dream,” Toni concluded his hymn.
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Rafael Nadal
